Regardless of what rules we choose, one thing I don't see here in the comments much is the practice of setting a good example for your kids. Kids can easily identify hypocrisy. A parent can't tell their child to not get addicted to a smartphone if the parent himself is addicted to a smartphone. So as parents we set ground rules for our own conduct before even thinking about policy for the child: We should not sit there mindlessly scrolling, especially in front of the child. If we need to use the phone for some task, take it out, do the task, and show the child that you're using the smartphone as a tool to accomplish something, not for passive consumption.
If you limit your kid's screen time to some arbitrary amount that you yourself cannot even achieve, you're transparently sending the message that you're full of shit and kids know when you're full of shit.
I have a 2 year old daughter and even though I intuitively know it's important to set a good example, I've already been shocked to the extent this is true.
My daughter loves grabbing our phones and watching whatever she can pull up on them, dialing people. If you take it away she gets upset. At first I was thinking, wow phones are very addictive on a primal level, she's addicted to just the flashy screens.
I think the flashy screen being tempting might be a little true, but then I came to a different conclusion about why she was so fascinated with the phone.
I noticed she also "changes" her stuffed animals diaper including pretending to apply rash cream, pretends to read books laying around she's seen me read, fidgets with the same household items she's seen me fidget with. That's when I realized what may be obvious to people experienced with kids - they constantly imitate the adults in their lives.
So my daughter was probably obsessed with staring at a phone because she saw her parents obsessed with staring at their phones and wanted to imitate them.
Of course this may be more relevant for very young kids moreso than teenagers, where the smart phone addictions work at a higher more cognitive level. But it did drill home the message that our children can be a reflection of ourselves so if you want to improve their lives, improve your own.
Kids aren't addicted to the flashy screen first. The first order issue is they want to be like you. That want to be like you soooo much. With every fiber of their being.
Nah, they're super enticed by it. For the first two years of my kids life, we had no screens in the house that he ever saw. We had old Nokia brick phones, no TV, and we only used a computer when he was sleeping.
Regardless, the moment he saw an iPad in the library, he wanted to stare at it and fiddle with it for an hour. Even to the point of completing ignoring the model train set which he loves.
Considering the scale interpretation differences, it would be impossible for a child to not be enamoured with an iPad. Like us seeing a giant sized 4k screen for the first time, except even better for them since they can walk around with their portable giant screen!
Today's devices and apps are designed to be addictive in a way that my old Commodore wasn't. Of course it was designed to be appealing, I don't deny that. But I doubt that ProTracker or Sensible Soccer had marketing teams focused on maximising "screen time".
The point of the post I replied to was that kids are attracted to tech because they see the parents absorbed in it. I don't think this is the main reason.
The way the commodore 64 was so addictive even while not being designed to do so helps prove that point. Most of our parents thought we were wasting our time and should read a book or watch TV depending on the parent in question. Of course we didn't. In fact those other things were more time wasting IMO. We were learning to create.
That this obsession turned into great careers and changed the world (sadly not always for the better as you describe!) was overlooked back then.
But kids just love tech just like they love rockets and dinosaurs, they don't need their parents setting the example.
Definitely. My children loved phones even at an age where they couldn't care less about the screen.
I pictured it in my mind like the 2001 monoliths -- these black rectangular things that hold all of the knowledge, and around which all sorts of social behaviour arise. Of course they're fascinating!
The good news, young parents, is you have a couple years to get it together. A infant wants to see your smiling face, but also won’t be scarred for life if you sometimes look away at a screen. Commit yourself to setting a good example, work on it, and know that while you will slip, you’ve also got time to improve.
Some good steps are zero phones at family eating times, kid book time, and kid bed time. I personally also think it’s important you are visibly alone when you are on a screen, in other words don't let your kids see you ignoring another adult for the screen. Like a modern smoke break.
I find my mobile capable Apple Watch to be useful for this. When I come home, I can put the phone on the ledge where I put keys and wallet, and still be reachable.
Or when playing outside or going for a walk. No phone in pocket means it is harder to get distracted.
Interesting, I would assume a smartwatch on your wrist would make it way more easy to get distracted. But I've never worn a smartwatch so maybe I'm wrong.
My experience (as someone who spends too much time on my phone) is that a smartwatch helps avoiding me getting sucked in by my phone.
It’s much less usable and I hate constant notifications on my wrist, so I’ll usually have it on mute and do a quick check at my notifications occasionally to see if there’s anything urgent (usually work or a message from my wife).
I’ll mostly ignore my group chats on WhatsApp and emails, and there’s no risk of me getting sucked into group coversations with friends, YouTube or the Internet (I don’t have social media apps on my phone so that’s not too much of an issue), which is where the real time sink is for me.
Concur with parent post. I find the watch (Samsung here) to provide me with reassurance that servers aren't all down, CEO isn't sending bat signals, etc. I leave my phone in the cat when I go to dinner with wife and other attention-sensitive scenarios.
My main distraction/entertainment is reading on the internet (like HN), and I cannot do that on the watch. And it’s difficult to message back and forth, plus I have those notifications off.
Same thing when going to sleep, I don’t take phone near the bed, just have the watch on which has my alarms to wake me up with vibrate function.
I keep my smartphone plugged in whenever I'm not traveling away from home for exactly this reason. I know there are Android watches that don't require an Internet connection to a powered on phone, but the Apple Watch has been awesome for reducing my screen usage in general. I'm never tempted to "play" or "consume" on it, except for podcasts or music; it's just a very task-oriented device.
+1. "because I said so" and "when you're an adult..." are short-sighted non-fixes.
I'm an uncle to a 5 and 7 year old. They call you on your bullshit all the time! And even as a non-parent I get that it's hard to always have to debate a 5 year old, but they DO recognize and intake consistency, even if they don't have the capacity to understand logic and rationality. yet.
You gotta set a consistent and reputable example. Or else you're just making a human that understands power.
On top of that, if kids think you're a hypocrite, or even judgmental, they won't be transparent with you. They'll go behind your back and you'll lose the majority of your influence on them.
I love this. I believe it’s the only correct answer after reading and thinking hard about many.
The ability for young children to recognize hypocrisy is incredible, and the aptitude among teenagers to leverage hypocrisy to enable their own bad behaviour and use yours against you isn’t something worth contending with. You can only win by force, and your kids will resent the hell out of you for it. And for what? To look at your phone more?
Do any of us find ways to use our phones in worthwhile ways more than 15m in a day, truthfully? I sure as hell don’t. But I can sink a lot more time than that if I don’t think about what I’m doing.
That's just it. I put my smart phone in the cupboard with my wallet and keys when I come home and don't touch it unless I have to. Sometimes I'll be in the middle of something with my kids and I tell them what I'm going to do, even though they are just 2 and 4, before doing it. Then I put it back as soon as I'm done. Just tonightz for example I needed it to doubke check a recipe. So I told them I was going to look at a recipe, checked it out, and then put it back in the cupboard.
Having a designated place for your phone helps. Another thing I found to make phone use at home less appealing when I first wanted to get away from it was to have a personal rule that I always had to be stabding up in the corner. I don't allow myself to sit down with it, which actuality helps a lot.
I speak with my friends on my phone. Sometimes I may speak and laugh for two hours with an old friend I, for family/life reasons, haven't seen for years but with whom I have this ability to instantly resume our customary banter.
I read books on my phone. I do prefer a physical book but after I started a job where I travelled a lot I actually started buying the electronic versions, and once I got a phone with an OLED display it is quite okay to read on it in the dark. I read at least an hour a day.
I think the "problem" is that any phone usage looks the same. If you are sitting with your calculus book you look "usefully busy", but not if you're studying on your phone. If I read a thick novel I look serious and smart, but with the book on the phone I look like I'm scrolling on Facebook or whatever people use nowadays. If I watch a lecture on computer science I appear the same as if watching anything else. Is "phone" itself bad, or is it just that it looks the same as if one is being "lazy"?
You’ve changed my mind. I was talking in extremes, but you’re right, some people use their phones very socially and that’s often a good thing. There’s a grey area where it’s “social”, but not very directly or healthily in my opinion, but if you’re in the white area where you’re having direct connections with people you care about, that’s great. It just happens to be that I only do that for 5-10m in a day, but if I did more, I’d totally think that’s fine (or good, even).
I think the issue is that a lot of us don’t use them to stay connected in a healthy manner, but I shouldn’t assume that includes everyone.
Also, talk to them. Tell them what the dangers are, tell them what they need to talk to you about.
I just had a conversation with my 15 year old about who she talks to online, how she decides what is trustworthy, the fact that conmen and paedos might play a long game etc.
I agree very strongly with this. Honesty with the kids and clear explanations and options are a big help.
I did this once in the 90s with my first kids. I'm currently raising my granddaughter and it's a much different scene. So far I'm still figuring it out but I have a couple of tips I could share.
One that seems to work the same is to make sure they've got options. Now what I mean by that is they need to be able to bring it to me rather than me find out about it or get it from them. So what i did, is make damn sure that when they bring something to me we talked through it work it out and it's going to be less painful, if it has to be painful at all, then it would be otherwise. So the incentive is clear take that shit to Papa let's find out what we have to do.
Another one, that appears to be a little bit harder today is to give them safe computing options. One really easy example is typing a URL into a browser, rather than the address bar. There are many others, you get the idea.
Local devices seem to complicate this, but in the 90s I made sure the internet facing computer gear wasn in common rooms. That way it was a family activity, and that was really good for building trust sharing experiences and all the other good things that need to happen to have a healthy dialogue between parents and child.
I may have more to say on this later, but I'm off to read all the other great comments.
> Kids can easily identify hypocrisy. A parent can’t tell their child to not get addicted to a smartphone if the parent himself is addicted to a smartphone.
You can’t tell people “don’t get addicted to X” (I mean, you can tell them anything, but telling people not to get addicted isn’t an effective measure to prevent addiction, generally, and hypocrisy isn’t the main reason.)
I've been following this "good example" for both my kids who are 10 and 2 years old and I can say it works very well. At least for the addictive behavior. We still allow them to watch movies and cartoons plus games in TVs and iPads but no phones for them.
My wife and I have a policy that when we're eating no screens are allowed unless it's an emergency. I think this probably has the biggest effect of all. Also we have zero social networks (except professional ones).
I'm so tired of going to restaurants and seeing the entire family looking at their screens. The bigger the kid the bigger the screen. Technology really has killed social interaction and I try my best to raise my kids out of this mass hypnosis everybody seems to be in.
When we go out to eat my table is always kind of a mess because my two year old is all over the place. And that's fine. We can deal with it and we have some fun. I really don't buy he argument to giving kids a screen during meals so the adults can talk. Kids must engage in any conversation they want or simply sit and listen to adults talking. That's how they learn. If they're constantly zooming out then they won't learn how to behave properly.
I find it too convenient that adults who never had problems with this kind of addiction (because those devices did not exist) continue to feed their kids with algorithms.
Once my kids get to an age that they are more responsible I'll handle them a device and set boundaries. Since we (the adults) have been showing boundaries since the beginning I think it will work just fine.
We were sitting at the table, I was responding a work message on the phone. My son took a phone from my hands and put it aside, because I wasn’t paying attention. It happened more than once, during non-work hours and there was no urgency to respond tbh. Then when I had to take an ipad with cartoons he was watching away, I felt how hypocritical it was. I actually was glad he threw a tantrum, because had he been a little older and called out my hypocrisy, it would corner me.
Setting a good example shouldn't be the only tool in the toolbox, and it's possible to not set a good example and still do OK, but it's probably the best single thing you can do.
This is something I think about a lot, whenever I'm holding my infant and trying to maneuver my phone into my other hand -- what behavior am I modeling? It's made me more cognizant of how I'll pull out the phone at any free moment, even just for 20 seconds, so I can occupy myself by opening the browser and seeing something, anything.
Seriously, adults have a hard time resisting, kids have zero chances.
While we had the chance of growing up without this, they don’t.
Our entire social fabric and kids developpement is gone.
This summer there was very very few kids playing outside, even if my kids were out, there no one out there.
It took us two years to realize that our front neighbor had two kids!
Yes buts it’s inevitable that the child at some point will notice other adults/people who use the smartphone in that manner so the belief that it’s okay to passively consume will be reinforced no matter what the parents behavior is
that's a strange take to me, like why say it? the kid will spend 99% of their formidable time with the parents. sure, baby sitting, grand parents, and over time other external influences creep in, but why turn this into a "yes, but"?
especially when these influences absolutely don't have equal weight.
This is true. But if everyone else in the world is using smart phones and you and your kid are the only people in the world NOT using smart phones... your kid will still think you're full of shit.
Nah, that’s self-defeating bullshit. As parents we are flawed broken humans, just like all the other flawed broken humans. Just because a parent has a problem with alcohol, or excessive phone use, or any other vice, does not absolve them of setting reasonable restrictions for their children. Is it hypocrisy? Probably. Is it less effective than if the parent did not have said vice? Certainly. Is it better to set limits for your kid and explain why? Definitely.
Children learn by example. There are exceptions of course, and if you believe in exceptions rather than rules then go spend all your income in lottery tickets.
Of course they learn by example, but show me the perfect parent? Do you want to doom your kids to all of your own failings? Kids also learn by seeing the flaws in their parents and having the parent explain how they got there and how not to repeat the mistakes.
He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.
Big point of fights between me and my wife: me using my phone. Alternative in my view is being bored, providing the opportunity to talk to her.
I don't use it when we are at dinner or doing an activity. When she is doing something (more constructive eg dealing with our Airbnb) I'm tempted to use my phone. What do I do? Well this. Read HN, twitter (follow fantasy football, economics, politics).
It's come to me even just wanting a bath each night after work because it is a guilt free 30-60 mins doing what I want on my phone.
Kids policy: 2 aged 7 and 10 (I trying to see again via lawyers, another story). Policy for them was 1hr day on weekdays after homework, 2-4 hours on weekends. Usually they play Minecraft on their tablet.
I think this is reasonable. What the hell do I know...
If you limit your kid's screen time to some arbitrary amount that you yourself cannot even achieve, you're transparently sending the message that you're full of shit and kids know when you're full of shit.